MOMents: Stitched Stories

Working in richly layered textile collage, Paulina Constancia’s MOMents traces the quiet, intricate rhythms of care that shape daily life. It reflects the resilience and sacrifice woven into motherhood, where countless acts, often unnoticed, carry profound significance. Figures unfold across her compositions in vibrant, stitched narratives: multi-armed caregivers balancing domestic tasks, tender classroom scenes, and moments of rest and connection, each image conveying emotional complexity and devotion.

A Tactile Exploration of Motherhood Through bold colour, pattern, and hand-stitched detail, Constancia brings the labour of nurturing into clear and deeply felt focus. Rooted in her experience of early motherhood while living far from extended family, these works draw from memory, distance, and cultural continuity. Scraps of fabric, repurposed and reassembled, become vessels of meaning, symbolizing routines, gestures, and fragments of lived experience. The resulting compositions feel both intimate and universal, honouring mothers, caregivers, and guiding figures across generations and geographies.

About the Artist Paulina Constancia is a multidisciplinary naïf artist, storyteller, and community arts facilitator based in Canada, originally from Cebu, Philippines. Her practice bridges personal memory with collective experience, exploring themes of caregiving, migration, family, and the quiet significance of everyday life. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including participation in the International Meeting of Naïve Artists in Slovenia and recognition at the Art Naif Festival in Poland. She recently presented a retrospective at the Musée international d’art naïf de Magog in Québec.

Get Involved Extending beyond the gallery, Constancia invites audiences into this process through her Stitched MOMents Workshop on May 5, where participants create their own textile-based reflections. Like the exhibition itself, the workshop offers a space to pause, remember, and transform personal experiences of care into shared, tactile stories. Visit the Dignam Gallery at the Women’s Art Association of Canada in Yorkville to experience this deeply moving collection.